Conventional vehicular parking brakes may have hand- or foot-operated actuators in the form of a lever that is pulled or pushed by the vehicle operator. The lever is connected to a cable which in turn actuates a braking shoe or other mechanism connected to the vehicle. The hand operated actuators are often referred to as hand brakes, whereas the foot operated parking brakes are generally referred to generically as parking brakes.
In order for a parking brake to be commercially acceptable, the parking brake generally has to provide two features. First, the parking brake actuator should ensure that there is no slack in the cable. It will be appreciated that the cable will stretch and therefore lengthen over time over time. Conventional parking brake actuators generally include some kind of tensioning mechanism to remove slack in the cable. Typically, a clutch is also provided to couple and decouple the tensioning mechanism from the operating lever.
Second, it is generally desirable to ship the parking brake actuator to the vehicle assembly plant in a condition where the tensioning mechanism is not activated so that there is plenty of slack in the cable to enable the installers to connect the cable to the braking elements without having to overcome the bias forces provided by the tensioning mechanism.
Conventional parking brake actuators that provide the above features are bulky, particularly in their width or breadth. Conventional parking brake actuators are also somewhat awkward in that that have a removable clasp (referred to as a ‘grenade pin’) that is used to keep the tensioning mechanism in a disabled condition prior to installation. The removable clasp is thrown away afterwards. However, in the process of installing the parking brake the personnel working the vehicle assembly line have to have access to the removable clasp which limits options for console installation. In addition, in the event the parking brake has to be serviced, the repair mechanics typically need to overcome the bias forces provided by the tensioning mechanism.
It would be beneficial to address these and other shortcomings of the prior art.